Hyderabad, September 19: A hospital is where surgeries are done on patients. But how about doing a major surgery to a hospital itself to resuscitate it? This precisely is on the agenda of the state government in regard to the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), once prestigious but now afflicted with multiple disorders.
Chief Minister K Rosaiah has constituted a three-member panel to find a director for the institute as the term of the incumbent expires this month-end.
Sources indicate that the government is keen on getting it right this time. What is worrying functionaries in the top echelons of the government is the slow and steady loss of patronage and prestige of the institute: occupancy in recent months has fallen to about 600 as against the 1000-plus beds available. Broken wheel-chairs, soiled seats, damaged doors and windows, unplastered walls and shortage of even mundane items as cotton and bandages not to speak of the lack of essential equipment in some departments are only some of the problems plaguing NIMS.
In the past few years, some 100 doctors are said to have left the institute, apparently demotivated by the state of affairs. Moreover, the government has had to institute a vigilance probe into charges of corruption at the hospital.
After converting NIMS into an autonomous institute more than two decades ago, the government has experimented with having outsiders as directors, barring a couple of exceptions. But going by the end result, this does not seem to have worked.
The NIMS faculty association has started pressing the chief minister and the health minister to give the job to an insider this time.
“If the repair process has to be taken up in right earnest, there is a need to identify someone who is senior, has seen the best and worst of the institute, has good administrative abilities and carries respect among the staff as well as in society,” said a faculty member.
A high-level functionary in the state, who himself was witness to the poor conditions in the hospital, told this newspaper that it is imperative for the government to ignore extraneous considerations such as caste, personal loyalties and equations with those who matter in government while choosing nominees for such crucial positions.
Will the chief minister brush aside pressures, as he did while revamping the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), and make the right choice in regard to NIMS too is the question for which an answer will have to be found soon.
–Agencies